food.travel.photography.&.cats

Month: May 2011

Last fall, when I made a bunch of pumpkin puree from our Halloween Jack o Lanterns, I was inspired to make all these pumpkin goodies. The recipe that caught my interest in my search was pumpkin gnocchi. Gnocchi are soft dumplings usually made of potatoes and flour. It just so yummy. What’s funny is that we can never pronounce gnocchi correctly. Guh-noki?, Nyo-chi? My bf, Yip gave up and by default he says guh-noogie 🙂

So recently, I bought a can of pumpkin puree and made gnocchi again, following Closet cooking’s recipe. I love the color and the hint of pumpkin flavor. The dough is really sticky, so I used more flour than what the recipe calls for. It takes a long time to shape the little pieces of dough, especially since I want markings on each piece. For some reason, I had a hard time rolling pieces of dough with the fork, but Yip picked it up really fast (he is the better cook) and showed me. Now I can whip through the whole batch and have the patience to finish the job. Warning…making gnocchi is very time consuming, so you may want to shape half the dough and the other half the next day. But it is a fun activity with the help of little ones or big friends too.

Since it’s usually the two of us, we freeze the gnocchi separately and place them in a zip lock bag. When ready to eat, place however much in boiling water and cook in a sauce. Gnocchi tastes so good and a great alternative to our usual boring spaghetti.

Directions:
1. Simmer pumpkin puree in a sauce pan to absorb some wetness and let it cool.
2. Mix egg yolk into the puree.
3. Combine salt, nutmeg, and flour together.
4. Add flour mixture into the puree to form a soft sticky dough.
5. Take pieces of dough and roll out into long ropes about 1/2 inch thick.
6. Cut the rolled ropes into 1/2 inch pieces and then roll the pieces in flour lightly shaking off any excess.
7. Roll the pieces with a fork (or gnocchi board) to give them the ridges.
8. Cook desired amount of gnocchi in boiling water until it floats to the surface, about 2-3 minutes. Remove and drain.
9. Cook in a sauce or fry.

I made a tomatoe sauce with spicy Italian sausage, mushrooms, onion and asparagus on the side, topped with cilantro and Parmesan cheese :9

Wedding season is approaching and we are getting ready and geared up for another year of celebration! In the next few months, my company Ipomoea Films will be busy filming, photographing, and editing. I am excited to capture all the creative themes, decorations, and sweet love stories.

For a week, I’ve been learning to make macarons. After work, I announced that I’m making macaron again and the bf replied, “Macaron, macaron, my face is going to turn into a macaron. ” Well, that’s because he eats all of my creations:) Macarons are so small and delicate, you don’t realized how many you pop into your mouth. They are made with only 4 ingredients: egg whites, ground almonds, powdered sugar and granulated sugar. That’s it.

However, the results of my effort are not great and I even went out to buy a Silpat mat and piping tools to make them right. I started with deflated ones, then burnt ones, overly sweet, and lastly, ones that cracked. To my surprise, I’ve used up my bag of powdered sugar, an ingredient that usually stay in the cupboard for too long. So, I think it is time to stop for awhile and bake something else. If anyone have any tips or easy recipes for macarons, let me know!

I came across this raspberricupcakes\’ piggy macarons and they are so cute! When I’m more experience, I will try her recipe. I only followed her method in assembling the pig. Luckily, I got one shell that looked like a pig. Macarons are very tricky…sigh

I savaged the few macarons that looked good enough for a photo shoot and let my bf eat all the defected ones.

Ipomoea Films is our photography and cinematography company. We provide wedding photography and videography services through out the Bay Area, Sacramento and Napa Valley. What I love most about this work is that I learn about so many different culture in tradition, food, and celebration. It is great getting a glimpse of our happy couple’s love story. We are able to capture lovely moments and create wonderful personalized films. If you haven’t seen our work, please check out our website: http://ipomoeafilms.com/

When we’re not filming and editing weddings, we like to continue improving our skills and do artistic studies like our still life series. In this series we collected ornaments from various places around Bay Area and Sacramento Valley. Also with the help of our friend Wendy, she loaned us many beautiful, precious, and full of history art pieces for our still life project. One of our goal is to develop a foundation of color matching. Another goal is to capture the most natural form of each subject and combine them together. And lastly, the balance between the subjects and open space.